Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(36)

I trailed my hand down her arm and threaded our fingers together. Tugging lightly, I led her toward the sofa. She followed silently, not putting up any resistance, for which I was grateful. I sat down on the couch, and Lucia sat beside me, depositing the cell phone in her hand on the coffee table next to mine. Then she sat back, stiff and still. I cradled the hand I was already holding in both of mine and waited for her to speak.

Lucia continued to look straight ahead, her eyes glassy, her expression dazed, broken only occasionally by brief flashes of other, darker emotions. She took deep, controlled breaths, inhaling for a four count and exhaling the same, and I deliberately timed my own breathing to match hers. This seemed to go on for an eternity, but the calming technique appeared to have the opposite effect on her. Every muscle in her small frame was taut, and her jaw was clenched so tightly, I was positive she might shatter her molars.

To say that I was uneasy with the situation would have been akin to remarking that the ocean was wet. But this wasn’t about me or my state of mind. It was about her. I didn’t know what to do. She was obviously extremely distraught about something, and instinct told me not to push her, yet obeying that impulse was killing me.

When I shifted a bit closer so I could put my arm around her, a strangled sound somewhere between a moan and a wail wrenched itself from her throat, and she shook me off. She whipped her head around and, for the first time since she’d arrived, looked me square in the eye. Her naked feeling made me recoil before I could stop myself. Lucia was upset with me.

My insides lurched, and I mentally ran through all the things I could’ve done to put that look in her eyes, completely ignoring any advice regarding inventing things to worry about. It wasn’t her birthday. I hadn’t broken any plans that I could recall. And I didn’t think forgetting to pick up something from the store would garner what I was seeing in her eyes.

It took a while, but finally I reached my own breaking point. I couldn’t stand Lucia’s calculated silence any more than I could bear her accusing glare. Frankly, both were starting to piss me off. I’m all for owning up to my mistakes and taking my lumps if I deserve them. But you have to at least tell me what I did wrong.

“What?” My tone was snappish, my voice harder than I intended, and I immediately regretted it. I ran one hand through my hair, tugging viciously at the snarls I encountered, knowing my frustration would continue as long as Lucia wanted it to. She was keeping me trapped there on purpose.

Lucia stared at me a moment longer, evidently gathering her resolve; the courage collecting in her glassy eyes was practically visible. The muscles along her jaw tensed, and she inhaled slowly. She clenched her hands into fists on top of her knees and opened her mouth. I caught the faintest whiff of alcohol, and my anxiety spiked. Lucia wasn’t much of a drinker.

“Is it her?”

I blinked once, my mind blank. I had no freaking idea what the hell she was talking about.

“Is what who?” But the instant the words were out of my mouth, I knew. Well, at least who the “her” was. The “it” was still fuzzy. My heart bounced back and forth between my lungs, and a cold dread corkscrewed down my spine.

“The woman I met at the diner this morning.” Lucia’s eyes flashed, but her lower lip quivered the way it always did just before she started to cry.

“Allison?” The unease balled up inside me was growing heavier and more oppressive by the second.

“Yes. Allison.”

“What about her?” I felt as though I was creeping precariously across a frozen pond, the thin, brittle ice ready to splinter and crack if I misstepped. My heart thudded painfully. Could she hear it? She had to be able to.

“She’s the one, isn’t she?” Lucia’s eyes were sad now, glistening with unshed tears.

“The one what?” I still wasn’t positive where this conversation was going. I’d never talked about Allison to Lucia. Not once, not ever. And she’d only crash-landed back in my life a little more than twenty-four hours ago. How could Allison be the one anything?

“She’s the woman you were with before me.” Lucia’s voice was a low, pained whisper. “She’s the one who broke your heart.”

I gasped, surprised she’d so easily reached the correct conclusion. How had she done that? Maybe I hadn’t given her enough credit. Or maybe I wasn’t as unreadable as I’d always tried to be. I wasn’t quite ready to concede defeat, however.

“What makes you say that?” I intentionally made my voice soothing and light, trying the exact tone I used when talking to a threat subject who’d just said something bat-shit crazy. And the glint of fury in Lucia’s eye now told me she knew it.

“Are you denying it?” Her voice was louder now, more sure. Its shrill edge made me grimace. It completely contradicted the way she normally spoke, even when upset. How much had she had to drink?

“I was merely wondering what made you deduce that.”

She refused to be diverted. “So it was her?”

I nodded once. “Yes. She’s the last serious relationship I had before you.”

The pageant of varying emotions resumed its play across Lucia’s face. Should I have lied to her? No, that would’ve been more for my own benefit than hers, to assuage my guilt at causing her all this pain. In the long run, being honest with her was probably better. At least she wouldn’t feel betrayed if she discovered the truth later.